


Thurible

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death Fix, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Souls, do whatever backflips you need to make this fit into canon my guy, hey yall.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-30 19:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: It's a gamble. Because it's not certain. And if it's not true - if it didn't work, if Natasha failed - it would be an impossibly callous twist of the knife. There's nothing harsher than false hope. It's worse than salt in the wound. It's ripping the wound open and pouring lye into it.





	Thurible

**Author's Note:**

> "But feralsoviets, none of this fits into canon in any way!" 
> 
> "I know," I say, already asleep

Natasha sits haunted on the edge of her bed. She's not asleep. She's alone in the dark. If someone were to walk in, they'd see her perched with her arms around her knees, rocking. Her eyes aren't fixed on anything. She's inside of herself. She barely registers as alive. 

She's perched not only on her bed, but on a decision. 

Specifically, whether to tell Steve. 

She knows already, of course, the way anyone knows a moral decision before they make it, even her, whose sense of right and wrong functions more as an afterthought than as rules. It would be cruel to keep this from him. She's justified keeping other things from him about Barnes, half of it - okay, all of it - on the rationale that Barnes himself probably wouldn't want Steve to know. 

But this? 

Barnes would want him to know. If only because it would keep Steve from suffering. 

But it's a gamble. Because it's not certain. And if it's not true - if it didn't work, if Natasha failed or Barnes didn't want it - it would be an impossibly callous twist of the knife. There's nothing harsher than false hope. It's worse than salt in the wound. It's ripping the wound open and pouring lye into it. 

She presses her nose against her arm. She doesn't cry. Natasha never cries. She doesn't even grieve visibly. 

She does feel it, though. 

Calling it a "gaping hole" is a cliche, and also true. Her vagus nerve is doing its best to make sure she knows. It's like a punch in the sternum. And despite the fact that Natasha knows that human emotion is nothing more than a swirl of chemicals that play puppets with the brain, and that one day the chemical compound that is every feeling she's ever had will stop, and she will be unmade into - she almost thought  _ash,_ and a laugh bubbles up from her lungs - into earth, and someday no one will ever know about or remember any of them, not Bucky Barnes or Tony Stark or King T'Challa and certainly not Natalia Alianovna Romanova, she wants to sob. She wants to burst into tears and scream and beg it not to hurt. It hurts so much, inside of her. It's all there, it's all in her. She wants to claw at it. Like her grief is a living thing, rooted in her chest. 

_Get it out. Get it out. Get it out._

She uncurls, stands, and grabs the little metal thermos on the floor. It's screwed shut as tightly as it can be, which is important. She's skimmed the surface of it so many times that it's covered in her fingerprints. 

It's a plain little Camelbak, and it holds something infinitely precious. 

She reaches Steve's door and knocks. 

Nothing. 

"Steve," she calls, tremulous. "Steve, it's important." Natasha knows he's not asleep. 

"Not now, Natasha." His reply is weary. Heavy. "Sorry." 

She could, theoretically, come back later, although this isn't the type of thing she wants to risk anyone else hearing. More false hope. "It's important," she says again. "Steve?" 

There's some rustling behind the door, and then it cracks open. Steve looks even worse than her, which is a feat, considering that she's currently sans eyebrows. "This had better be important, Natasha," he says, and waves her in. His bed is untouched. He's holding himself raggedly. Not unseeing or dangerous, weapon-ragged, just frail. Whimpering raggedness. 

"I know - " she begins. "It's - " For once, she doesn't have the right words. "There's - " 

"Natasha." 

"I'm sorry about Barnes." She rolls her thumbs over the stainless steel. "But I have him." 

Natasha can see better in the dark than most, which is why she sees Steve's features darken. How awful he must think her. How cold. It hurts her to know that Steve thinks her capable of that kind of cruelty to a friend. "That's not funny, Romanoff." 

"It's not a joke." She holds the thermos up. "I have him." 

She hears him breathing, probably deciding whether this is black humor or a trick. It's sort of both, but not the way he thinks. "You mean his - what's left?" 

"Yes and no." It seems she can't break herself of talking in riddles even when she needs to. To make up for it, she clarifies: "It's his soul." 

A beat. 

His voice is softer, so she knows he knows she's not joking, but he doesn't believe her. "I don't know if you think you're trying to help, but I just. I'm sorry. I want to be alone." 

"No," she says, urgent. "This isn't a metaphor, Rogers. Steve. I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm telling you that Barnes' soul, his animus, spirit, whatever you want to call it - I have it. Maybe." Natasha takes a breath, her voice cracks and splits like plaster, and then she's crying. "I think Okoye might have gotten T'Challa's, too." Her eyes are hot. She's not in control of her mouth, or her voice, which has gone distorted. "I would have tried to get more, but I only had one thermos." Wonderful. Now she's snotting everywhere. "And there wasn't any time, you know, without a body to hang onto, souls just drift away." How horrible it had been, playing triage nurse in the horrible heartbeats after the snap. Which soul to save, which ones to turn loose into nothingness. 

"What are you saying?" 

"I'm not even sure I got it," she blunders on, and something else breaks in her, and she's crying the shaking, hiccuping sobs of a toddler. "I didn't have any smoke, and that's usually what souls do. Follow the smoke." 

Steve clearly doesn't understand what she's talking about, but the cogs are filtering out what matters: Bucky. Maybe not dead. 

She had knelt beside his dust, after Steve had gone, and whispered, praying and hoping and biting her tongue that Barnes' soul was still intact. "Come on, James," shaking. If Barnes' soul had a powerful enough will - and she knew he did - it would work, maybe. Barnes' soul-self would funnel into her thermos and not be lost, and that, at least, bought them time. If it had worked. If Barnes had understood what to do. 

"His soul," Steve says. "It's in that bottle." 

She nods. Steve might also be crying, and that's another layer of surreality - neither of them are criers. Ever. And they're both bawling over - what? The inside of a bottle? "There's not much we can do with it," she says. A shuddering exhale. Another batch of tears rolls forth. "Not without a body to put it in. But it's something. If it worked. There's options." 

Options that everyone who didn't catch their loved one's souls will hate her. Options that Barnes gets dragged back from death for the umpteenth time. Maybe he didn't want this, he chose not to come, and the thermos has nothing in it but empty, soulless air. 

Steve takes it in silently. Trembling. He has one hand over his mouth and nose. "Who can tell?" 

"If it worked?" Natasha conjures up a pale imitation of her characteristic wry smile. "The only person who can tell us for sure is dead." 

Wanda, she meant. 

"But I do think," she says. "That it was up to Barnes. In the end." 

**Author's Note:**

> hi im feralsoviets im nineteen and i never fuckin learned how to cope
> 
> The concept of souls being retrievable after death and able to maintain stasis in a container like a bottle or a thurible comes from the _Daughter of Smoke and Bone_ series. 
> 
> Please comment/kudos if you enjoyed.


End file.
